Page 12 of Merciless Sinner

I think back to this morning and how he looked at me. And how he’s looking at me now.

He’s the kind of man who you couldn’t resist even if you wanted to, and I won’t deny my attraction to him. But he’s talking about something deeper. Not just mere attraction.

The thought ignites that crazy something I keep feeling.

The something that gripped me when I first looked at him in the café.

“People at home think you’re dead,” he explains, speaking faster. “But I didn’t want to believe that. That’s why I looked for you everywhere, and I wouldn’t stop. That’s all I’ve done for the last two and a half years.”

His heartfelt words melt my fears, but before it can take full effect, the crude warning I was given about people from home hits me, flashing in my mind like the red and blue lights of a police car.

Don’t trust anyone who knows you from home.

Whatever happened to my parents and me was an inside job.

Someone fromhomewanted us dead. But I didn’t die.

I’m sure my enemies know that. They just haven’t been able to find me. No one has.

Until now.

As wonderful as it would be to believe this man who is claiming to be myeverything, I can’t trust him.

My travels have taught me enough to know that men like him in the Bratva are just the kind of people who would want me dead. So, I need to protect myself no matter what.

“You need to leave me alone.” I nod, trying with everything inside me to stay calm. “I’m not who you think I am.” It’s better if I keep going with the same excuse.

“Yes, youare.” His voice is more forceful. “Your name is Olivia O’Ridian. Your family is Irish. You live in New York, where you still have friends and family who love you. You studied art history and antiquities at Harvard. Believe me when I say you do not belong here. This is the last place you should be.”

I’m hooked on his words again and the possibility that I really could be this great person he’s talking about who went to Harvard.

But hearing I have friends and family who still love me sets off the warning bells in my soul even more. Nothing he says changes the fact that I can’t trust anyone. I don’t know them, don’t remember them, don’t want to see them, so it’s better I stick to the plan of not entertaining anything he has to say.

“I think you’re mistaken, and you need to leave me alone.” I step back again.

“I can’t do that.”

“You need to. I—”

He cuts off my next words by slipping his large hand behind my head and crushing his lips to mine.

The cruel, ravishing contact paralyzes me with a raw dose of desire and shock. I know I should pull away, but I don’t think I could, even if my brain could take back control over my body.

My heart pounds in my chest as his tongue pushes through the seam of my lips and he deepens the kiss, devouring me, overriding any fleeting thought I have to resist with the delicious suction of his lips.

A wild current of pleasure sweeps over my skin, and God, it feels like we should have always been kissing.

The kiss becomes carnal and sinfully hungry, and his warm, firm, demanding lips on mine feel like the only constant in my world of chaos.

I’m stunned at myself when I kiss him back with the same passion. His fingers glide through my hair, forcing my fears from my mind, and all I can think is that I want to feel him everywhere. Inside me, outside me, and all around.

The wicked sensation of need tingles in my chest, tightening my nipples as if he’d touched me there.

At that moment, footsteps crunch against the gravel on the path, and we pull apart. With my lips still on fire, I look to my left at the same time Virgo does to find Petr walking toward us.

There’s no way he didn’t see us kissing.

No way.

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